Thanks to Barbie Gorlick
(bmjgorelick@stic.net), a synagogue Jewish educator and active
participant in the successful Tri-Faith Dialogue of San Antonia (Texas),
we received this poignant message of Leroy Sievers,
Executive Producer of "Nightline" in Washington, DC.
Tonight, 18 May 2001, Nightline will tell us what has
happened with the lives and relationships of Palestinian and Jewish youth who
once formed bonds of friendship and understanding in the Maine summer camp of
"Seeds of Peace" far from their homes in the Middle East.
We thought you would want to know. -- L&L

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TONIGHTS SUBJECT: On yet another day when violence in the Middle Eastclaims more lives,
well look at what happened to the kids who participated in a program called
Seeds of Peace, which brings together Israeli and Palestinian kids. The
violence of the last year has strained and broken their commitments to peace,
and to each other.
---
I woke up this morning to an unfortunately familiar story. More violence
in the Middle East, more deaths, more injuries. This week has been
particularly bad. Five Palestinian police killed in what the Israeli Army
called a mistake. This morning an Israeli shot and killed while driving
in his car. And then worst of all, todays
suicide bombing at a shopping mall. The current death toll is seven, with
scores wounded. We had already scheduled tonights
broadcast before this latest violence, but now that it has happened, it makes tonights program even more timely.

Some time back, "Nightline" ran excerpts from a documentary on the
Seeds of Peace program. That program brings together Israeli and
Palestinian kids, along with kids from other Arab countries so they can get to
know each other as people, something they all admit is difficult, if not
impossible in the region today. They formed friendships that could never
have happened over there. It is a wonderful documentary, and provided
some reason for optimism that peace might some day be
possible.

Gillian Findlay, an ABC News correspondent based in Israel, had the idea of
tracking down the kids in the documentary to see what has happened to them, and
whether the last months of violence had changed them. And it has.
Friendships are strained. One of the Israeli kids is now a soldier.
One Palestinian cant go home because of the
violence. And one of the kids was killed in the first hours of violence
some eight months ago. And how do they view each other today? Have those
fragile friendships survived? And more important, do they still believe in
peace? I always try not to make this email sound like a promotion, but tonights broadcast really is very powerful, and we hope youll tune in.

In something of a side note, the last time I wrote about the Middle East, I
wrote about the deaths of two babies, one ten months old, one four months
old. One Israeli, one Palestinian. I received many emails, many of
which I responded to directly, asking how could I say that those two deaths
were somehow equivalent. Some people made the point that the Israeli
baby, shot by a sniper, was the victim of murder, while the Palestinian baby,
killed when as Israeli tank fired on a neighborhood, was the victim of an
accident.

Im sorry. As I said in my replies, I see the
death of any child, killed because of the actions of adults in a conflict they couldnt possibly understand, to be a tragedy. To
somehow try to excuse one, or to draw a distinction, to make one more tragic
than another, is to me, evidence that this conflict will never be
settled. Until everyone on both sides agrees that each death is tragic,
that each life is of value, I believe that I will continue to write these same
emails on a regular basis.

Why do I bring this up today? Because just before I wrote this, I was reading
the wire accounts of todays mall bombing, and they
mentioned a rescue worker finding a baby carriage in the debris, and the baby
was seriously injured and may not live. Just the latest in a long line of
tragedies. And we just got word that for the first time, the Israeli air
force has reportedly used planes to bomb the town of Nablus, and early reports
say there are at least five deaths. And people will still be arguing over
which are more tragic, which are justified, which are deserved, and whos to blame. It makes me heartsick.